Sometimes a True Story, and: The Bus

Sometimes a True Story

from Elementary Science by Grades, Book 3, edited by Frank Ballou, 1925

Sometimes when it is cold,the fruit stays on the treelong into winter.A true story is told. Mensay only a few words, guide their shipsby the light of a red star.

This is what people long ago thoughtthey saw when they looked at the stars:a wild animal that looked like a dog.

People thought they saw a storyabout a frog, little whips, a breastthe color of silver,shaped like a new moon.

Perhaps on a winter night you have seen them,the queer animals, in a darkerpart of the room.                Perhapsif it is deep, and has a door largeenough for them to get in,you have heard a song that is not the song of birds.

The Bus

A woman stands motionless in the street.Her blouse is dark gold, her shoes deep blue.Buildings rise behind her, whitening into sky.

A woman stands motionless in the middleof the street. Her coat is open, her stockings tornwhere her knees begin to blossom red.

Traffic picks up, curving into an ellipse around her.In the moment when the world stoppedher heart became as simple as rain.

Above her men on billboards smile downlike gods from great heights to where she standsin the middle of the street clutching a small purse.

Gray puffs of smoke climb in the distancebeginning their slow drift toward the sea.A shoe lies broken beside her.

Somehow she knows that if she stoopsto lift it up, the world that had stoppedto open a door, usher her gently down

and move on, will return for her,but in this moment she wants nothing,not the shoe, the purse,

the soft smoke waiting to continue outover the harbor, only to stand herein this street, beneath the miraculous

billboards, the iron sky.